Record-Keeping for Indies

I originally wrote this for the Dark Side Down Under's regular Magic Thursday Feature, but I've added a little bit more and thought it worth repeating here. Enjoy.

Promotion. Regardless of whether or not you’re independently or traditionally published, it’s a nightmare, a time-eater, a word-creation-time thief. But there are ways of reducing the amount of time you spend preparing each promotion and blog post. The simplest of these is to create an Excel spreadsheet or Word document capturing the information you’re going to find yourself needing to repeat for each and every title you produce. Arranging it in alphabetical order makes it easier to find in a list, or document. The following is a list of the information I find myself looking for every time I write a post to promote a particular title:

Title: Well, duh. Helps you find it on the spreadsheet or Word document

Author Name or Pen Name: for those of you who write under different ones. Trust me, when you’re in a hurry, mistakes happen. This will help reduce the chance of attributing the wrong pen name to a title. It’s been known…

Blurb and description: Trying to remember what you wrote last time rarely ever works. It is better to have a good basic blurb and description pre-written. That way you can copy and paste and then tweak it to suit the market or blog entry or platform you’re marketing to.

Spiel on availability: It’s easier to create this once, put it into a blog post or web entry, and then add the links you’ve prepared below, than to try to write it anew each time.

Release Date: You’d be surprised how easy it is to lose track of these, especially if you’re publishing on multiple fronts.

Book Buy Links: You need to list a link for each platform on which you make your work available. Having these links available in one document makes it easy to copy and paste them into blogs and emails when writing a promotion. It makes it easier to find the links, too, when you are formatting your files for upload to different platforms.

Every title I publish has at least an Amazon Kindle, and a Smashwords link. My longer works have links for Amazon Kindle, Amazon print versions, the CreateSpace store, Kobo, and the iTunes store. I should also add one in for Nook. In addition to those, I distribute my longer fantasy and science fiction titles via DriveThruFiction, so I have to include a link for that on those titles. When I start to produce roleplaying game titles, I will need to add a DriveThruRPG link as well.

ISBNs or Equivalents: Some platforms have free ISBNs you can assign your books. Others give you a combination of letters to which you affix a number. While it’s useful to have your ISBNs, it is absolutely essential to write down the letter-number allotments, because forgetting can lead to a frustrating time of guessing what number you were up to.

Benefits: Since I’ve been putting this information in one document, promotions have been a lot easier. I also find I can add links to the ‘my other work’ sections of my e-book editions a lot faster, now I don’t have to search the titles up each and every time I do the back matter for a title. They’re also helpful when updating your titles on Linked-In or adding your covers to Pinterest.

Little things like this buy you writing time, and in this busy, busy world, writing time is precious.